Desert Rose
by Aoshi on Speed
Summary: this is part of my Stories Untold series: when scar is called to Lior by Lyra,he finds himself in a bigger mess than he could have ever imagined. full synopsis inside
1. Introduction

Okay, so here's the REAL synopsis:

When Scar is called to Lior by the homunculi's master, he is offered with the opportunity to help stop a second Ishbal massacre from happening. After being assured that only military dogs will suffer from it, he agrees. But there is something off about this whole plan, what happened to Rose so that she was rendered mute? Why is Lyra helping this town if she is not a native of it and the military is covering it up? Why did Dante die so suddenly, and how did the Homunculi not hear about it? And why is it, that whenever he looks at the young girl with violet eyes, he feels a smile tug at his lips… what is the feeling that provokes him to protect her no matter the consequences?


	2. a message from the master

_I am Aoshi on Speed, also known as Meerkatie-chan, Okashira, Katiebug, the graphite Alchemist, Magdalena (to those in may spanish class) or just plain Moron._

_this is all based off of an RP so there are going to be storylines that overlap, but I'll explain them as they come._

_enjoy_

_and please read and review... I really don't want to have to hurt you._

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What was WRONG with these people? He hadn't even done anything yet they chased him like a common criminal! … okay, so he DID just so happen to be a serial killer and he HAD tried to steal his jacket back from the investigations department of military central HQ, but it was _his_ jacket in the first place! Not to mention the fact that it was getting to be very cold…. As a man who spent practically his entire life in the desert, Scar was not accustomed to cold AT ALL.

He sprinted down the street, making every twist and turn he could find to try and lose the gang of military dogs in black uniforms chasing him. Finally he saw an alleyway and threw himself inside it, diving behind a trashcan.

He pressed himself against the wall and waited until he heard the footsteps race right past him. Once he was sure they were gone he peeked out from behind the metal can… he didn't hear anything… he cautiously crawled all the way out and peeked around the corner of the brick building… they were gone…

He let out a sigh of relief and leaned back against the wall…

"Don't relax just yet, scarred man…" a low, sultry voice came from the shadows. Instantly he was on his feet and tried to run again, two long, razor-sharp, black nails shot from the darkness and caught the shoulder of his shirt, cutting the flesh on his shoulder as well. He froze… not wanting to be cut up further.

"It's not enough for me to be chased by the military… but you feel the need to torture me as well?" he said after a long moment of sorting out in his head what to do.

"oh, must you always expect the worst of me?" the voice came again and a pale face emerged from the shadows, just as he thought… it was her… her long, eerie, curls blending into the shadows behind her. Her much shorter…. Much wider companion hobbled up beside her, drooling as usual… looking at him… and drooling… was it drooling at him?

O.o

"what do you want with me?" he growled as he pulled against the talon pinning his shirt to the wall… wanting to be very very VERY far away from the blob that was looking at him like a hungry dog looks at a steak.

A second black needle-pint claw twanged in the wall an inch from his neck and he stopped moving.

"My master is calling you to the desert… I wouldn't think you would complain due to the dropping temperatures here." She said, mockingly sweetly, "and the fact that the military seems to be still insistent on having you freeze to death." She added noticing that he had, once again failed to retrieve his faded yellow leather jacket.

He scowled, "And who is your master?" 'More importantly, what does he want with me?' he thought silently to himself.

"so impatient, I'm getting there… first off, you may be interested in knowing that there's a second Ishbal massacre in the works…" she said, slowly starting to advance on him, retracting the claws as she got closer but keeping him effectively pinned.

"Is that so? Knowing your work you and your 'master' were probably the ones that started it." He growled, only flinching a little at the mention of his homeland.

"Oh, not at all," she smirked, "the little desert town of Lior was tragically led astray by a false prophet who eventually drove them all straight into a pit of turmoil and despair… now the military is stepping in to 'help' as they so call it. But, in their typical method, acting as though nothing is going on, of course"

"really… then how do you know about it… and why would you care?" he asked, calculating in his mind how he could wrench himself from her grasp without loosing his head.

She chuckled a little deviously, allowing the tip of her one nail to slip on the wall towards his throat a little, leaving a deep gash in the brick, making his eyes stop darting around, measuring spaces as she knew he was.. "Have you forgotten where you are? This happens to be central city, dear. Rumors leak very easily with the right persuasion…" she sighed melo-dramatically with false despair, "and now, I'm afraid little Lior is just a little slice of hell on earth, oh, it's almost too much to think about." She said, putting her free hand to her forehead.

"what do you want me to do about it?" he asked, pulling his neck as far away from the razor-edge of Lust's claw as possible without moving the rest of his body.

The woman's face straightened, "you know perfectly well…just what to do with what's left of that town…" she said, eyeing his brother's arm. "Think about it…" her face looked less threatening now, more or less like the woman she had been based off of. "all the lives in this arm of yours can finally be put to use… put that poor little town out of it's misery…" she said, gently taking the arm in her free hand.

His brain froze up… 'damnitalldamnitallDAMNITALL!' he yelled inwardly at himself. She was messing with his head again, and doing a VERY good job of it.

Finally he woke himself up and swiftly ducked out of her dangerous claws, leaving a large rip in his shirt at the shoulder and wrenching his arm free in the same move. "NO!" he yelled, "I refuse!"

With that he bolted off down the street, clutching the bleeding gash in his shoulder. Gluttony lunged foreward and managed to catch one black boot in his mouth before Lust called him back, "GLUTTONY!"

There wasn't any need to hold the blob back, the boot slid off easily and Scar just kept running, a little lopsided now, but just as fast as ever.

Gluttony looked up hopefully, one end of the boot still sticking out of his mouth. "no, no, gluttony, we still need him…" the fat little homunculus slurped the boot into his mouth and munched on it happily for a few seconds before it was gone.

"Don't worry; I know how he thinks… he'll be in Lior before the week's out." She said, perching herself atop her companion's shoulder.

"Lust…" Gluttony said, sucking on his finger again.

"yes, Gluttony?" she said as she glanced down.

"I'm hungry…" he said miserably as his stomach growled, "will I ever be able to eat him?"

She sighed and patted his bald little head, "we'll see, gluttony, we'll see."

* * *

_It's so cool to remember all this stuff, the RP is MUCH farther along now so looking back on all this is like looking at baby pictures for me... reminiscing about the time when Scar still used proper english and Lust was still an important part of the storyline (that was in no way, shape, or form a challenge to the Lust fans out there, please don't hurt me)_


	3. dejavu of the worst kind

_well, this is where it aaaaaalll began, those of you who are even remotely related to me know the story (wether you wanted to hear it or not) and all the trouble that began just because of it. oooh, this is gonna be fun (maniacal laughter)_

_I meana, wha?_

* * *

It was a matter of two days before Scar had successfully made it to Lior… he hated to admit it, but he was there… then again, the familiar desert climate was a whole lot better now… at least here the fall cool was bearable (to the normal people it would still be too damn hot to live with)

All ideas of a good mood plummeted to the ground once he saw the town though… Lust hadn't been lying, the second he laid eyes on it his mind flashed back to Ishbal.

The streets were paved with blood dribbling from the bodies that lay in the sewers. The sun had just about set and its light cast a blood-red sheen on everything. His eyes were wide and his mouth hung open in horror… he'd hoped that something like this wouldn't happen again in his lifetime. Like a horrible car crash, he couldn't look away.

He wrenched his mind from the past and forced himself to move towards the town… the master of the homunculi was in there somewhere… if he had anything to do with it; he was going to make them regret starting this trouble. (He didn't believe a word of what Lust had told him)

It was even worse once he got actually inside the town. He could hear the people screaming every now and then. Women wandered past him, carrying their dead children, muttering to them as though they were still alive. Worse than that were the children that were still alive and cried for their parents.

He began to feel sick to his stomach.

He felt something tug at his pant leg and he looked down. An infant barely old enough to crawl looked up at him with watery eyes… it was spattered in blood.

He swallowed hard, its eyes didn't focus quite right, it was very obviously close to death… he kneeled down and picked it up. He decided he'd at least keep it company. Maybe he'd find someone who could take care of it…

A not too far down the street, a crowd was gathering. He worked his way through so he could see; it looked like a procession of some kind. He kept hearing murmurs of "the holy mother." There were about twenty women dressed in white with their heads down marching at a slow, solemn pace… in the middle there was one in a more purple-colored cloak. To her right was a young woman with short-cropped black hair, and a very old-fashioned dress.

The girl in the center looked up and into the crowd… she had dyed pink bangs that framed her slightly tanned face and deep violet eyes. For a split second, she stared into Scar's own crimson eyes and blinked at him. He couldn't help but stare back… he knew she couldn't possibly see his red eyes behind the sunglasses… right?

The child in his arms made a small noise and he felt a tiny hand grip his forearm then go limp. He looked down and found that the infant was dead, it's tiny mouth opened slightly and it's eyes totally unfocused and glazed over.

He looked around, a few people had, indeed, noticed but seemed to only vaguely care. WHAT IN THE NAME OF ISHBALA WAS WRONG WITH THEM? A child had just died in his arms and they simply turned their attention back to their "holy mother"?

Now he knew that there was something very very wrong here. He was determined to get to the bottom of it. He didn't know what to do with the child's body and could only lay it in a basket of dying flowers next to an abandoned shop. He had a gut feeling that the Homunculi's leader had something to do with it. He slipped through the crowd and followed the procession to a very large church with a destroyed statue in front of it.

It was incredible how easily people overlooked you if you just pretended that you were supposed to be there… Scar simply followed the procession into the building and into the room they all crowded into… he thought that they'd at least notice that he was the only man in the room but they overlooked him. So he leaned against the wall and calmly watched as the women all came to shake the hand of the one that had been in the middle

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Rose simply smiled as the other women came to thank her for various things… she really was only the one that Lyra-san spoke through… not that she could really talk for herself… she didn't mind… so long as it would help her town.

The infant in her arms tugged at her robe and smiled toothlessly up at her, reaching for her face. She smiled happily and tickled his belly, making him giggle. The women in white robes vacated the room and she looked up, in the corner, leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest, was the man she'd seen in the crowd… he looked up at her with an emotionless, tanned face, a pale x-shaped scar stretched from his hairline to his cheekbones

"The holy mother, I presume?"

She jumped back a little with a sharp intake of breath. Lyra snapped her head in the direction of the voice, "You! What're you doing here?" she demanded, pushing rose and the infant in her arms behind her.

"The leader of the Homunculi called me here…" he said, stepping forward and removing the sunglasses from his face revealing his deep crimson eyes. Lyra lowered her arm, "oh…. I apologize, Scarred man, it's been a very long day, I'm sorry but Dante-sama is no longer with us, I'm afraid… she was murdered just before you arrived…"

"Figures." He said as he turned to leave.

"But, I have taken over in trying to save this town in her stead!" she called after him, "please, we still need you." She pleaded.

He turned and looked at the young woman with a studying look. But he took a few steps further into the room, signaling that he was listening.

"Allow me to introduce us…" she said smiling as sweetly as she could, "my name is Lyra, and this here," she put her hands on Rose's shoulders, "is Rose, our holy mother, and Daniel, her child."

Rose looked up at him then timidly looked downward; busying herself with the infant in her arms. The man had such a … almost angry look on his face that she really didn't want to look at him for too long. Lyra had told her that he would be coming and that he didn't have a record of attacking anyone but state alchemists… none the less… he was frightening to look at.

He nodded to her despite her fearful behavior, "hello to you both." He said politely then looked to Lyra again, "so… if Dante is dead then why did her pawns still follow me?" Rose noticed his arms were crossed again as he moved past them to the window and looked out at the chaos below.

"well, they move so quickly and they don't obey anyone but their master," she said, turning around and taking a few steps toward him, "they had no idea, I'm afraid, that she had passed on… so they still pursued you and there was no way to stop them." She said apologetically, "but I think this can work out in both of our favors-"

"If you want me to turn this town into a sacrifice, I tell you now that I will refuse." He said, cutting her off. Rose looked from him to Lyra in panic, a look in her eyes begging Lyra to tell her that such a thing would never happen to her hometown.

"No! Good heavens, no!" Lyra said quickly…but a flicker of a different emotion flashed on her face. Was that… annoyance? At what?

She sighed and turned her head away, black hair falling around her chin, "I must admit that WAS part of Dante-sama's original plan…" Rose's eyes widened at this… why wasn't she informed? "But, I whole heartedly disagreed with her methods and had always tried to talk her out of them. We have been taking different actions now, we're doing all we can to restore peace…"

"Well, I must say, you're doing a _fantastic_ job so far." He said sarcastically, glaring out the window still.

"Well, we're doing all we can!" Lyra said defensively. With that, Scar turned around and looked at the two of them and suddenly felt guilty, Rose looked down at the child in her arms, hurt.

"I'm sure you are… forgive me." He said quietly, seeing the girls face… he hadn't realized how much strain this was to be put on the shoulders of two young girls…

"But we can't do this on our own, Scar… we just don't have the ability…" Lyra said, giving him a determined gaze, "Will you help us?"

He looked at Lyra, then out the window to the chaos below… thinking, weighing his options… if he did help, he may simply be putting himself at more risk for being caught by the military. If he didn't help them it was almost guarunteed that the town would be turned into the next Ishbal… a shrill cry broke his thoughts.

He turned around to see the child in Rose's arms wailing. She looked slightly surprised for a moment then immedeately tried to comfort it. She then looked up to him, pleading. She uttered not one word, made not one gesture except that look… so desparite and begging.

Scar let out a reluctant sigh, "Just tell me what you need me to do…"

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_MWAHAHAAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA! by the end of this fic, you will be regretting that one, scarface!_

_Imeana wha?_

_REVIEW DAMMIT!_

_I have set up a new system for myself that I'm not gonna post the next chapter untill I get a review so there! MEH!_


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